Modern stator manufacturing production lines include several different stations at which different manufacturing operations are performed. One such operation that is frequently accomplished at an early stage in the process for manufacturing a 2-pole stator, is to assemble stator coil terminals or supports therefor on an unwound stator core. Thereafter, the stator coils are wound on the stator core pole pieces at a stator winding station using magnet wire having an electrically insulating coating. A common practice in use at this time is to temporarily clamp the stator coil lead wires to wire clamps during the winding process. At a later manufacturing stage, the lead wires are connected to the terminals mounted on the stator core at a coil lead terminating station.
One type of stator manufacturing machine, known as a turret winder, such as the machine 50 disclosed in above-mentioned Beakes et al. U.S. Pat. No. 5,186,405, includes a turret by which unwound stators having cores on which terminal members have previously been assembled are moved to a stator winding station at which the stator coils are wound and by which the freshly wound stators are then moved to a lead connect station at which the stator coil lead wires are connected to the terminal members on the core. Lead pull assemblies at the winding station have wire grippers which are manipulated to place the stator coil lead wires into temporary wire clamps that are moved to a lead connect station along with the wound stator. Mechanisms at the lead connect station remove the stator coil lead wires and connect them to stator terminals or terminal support members on the stator core. As known to those familiar with the stator winding art, the same general method is practiced using different types of mechanisms for transporting the stator from the winding station to the coil lead terminating station, such as shown in the above mentioned Banner et al. U.S. Pat. No. 5,090,108.
Various temporary wire clamps have been used. A simple wire clamp having jaws that are spring biased toward one another may be sufficient. However, wires temporarily held by a spring operated clamp may occasionally may remain stuck in the clamp and interfere with subsequent manufacturing procedures. Wire clamps that are spring-biased opened and closed by individual air actuators (one for each temporary clamp) have also been used. By using air actuators to close the clamps it was possible to ensure that wires of various different sizes would be securely clamped. However, the air actuators had to be transferred with the clamps and the expense, complexity, and space requirements for the air actuators and their controls made their use undesirable.